On Windrush Day, the 72nd anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush, it has been revealed that the scheme set up in April 2019 to compensate the victims of the Windrush Scandal has, to date, only paid less than 5% of the claimants. It is now over 2 years since the scandal emerged – people who had lived and worked in the UK for many years losing jobs and benefits, and at least 164 held in detention centres, or deported.

Just like before, with having to prove their right to stay in Britain – the Home Office having destroyed landing cards and other records, “the burden is on the claimant to prove financial loss,” said Beri Nwosu, a solicitor and immigration specialist at Hackney Community Law Centre, adding that specific, “scientific” terminology used throughout the form made the application process extremely difficult.

Campaigner Patrick Vernon’s, whose parents were part of the Windrush generation, said: “It’s important that we remember the huge contribution the Windrush generation made to the UK, and Windrush Day helps us to do that. But it’s bittersweet, because the hostile environment policies that led to the scandal are still in place. People are still waiting for compensation and we’re still waiting for action on the Lessons Learned review.”

Twelve years after publicly endorsing a campaign to build a major memorial commemorating the victims of the transatlantic slave trade when Mayor of London, now Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been urged to provide funding to build the statue. In 2008 Johnson said it was “important that this history is never forgotten”, adding: “Hyde Park is a fitting site for a permanent memorial to the millions who lost their lives and the courageous people who fought to end the brutal transatlantic slave trade.” But no funding was forthcoming then, and the government declined to fund the Hyde Park memorial in December 2019.

Patrons of the campaign include Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Keir Starmer’s race relations adviser. The campaign organisers said: “Right now, there is no major memorial in England to commemorate the victims of the transatlantic slave trade. There are millions of people who were brought over from Africa in ships and kept as slaves. Many of them built Britain, but were subjected to cruelty and forced into inhumane conditions.”

To find out more, read this article. Visit the campaign website. A new £4m fundraising campaign can be found here.

This powerful Guardian opinion piece by Afua Hirsh states: "What black people are experiencing the world over is a system that finds their bodies expendable, by design." African Americans have been saying this time after time, death after death – Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, and so many more. And now, again. Here in the UK many black people have also been saying the same things because "many of us have been fighting for this all our lives."

Instead of Dominic Raab's wanting to see de-escalation of tension, the British government "could have had the humility to use this moment to acknowledge Britain’s experiences. It could have discussed how Britain helped invent anti-black racism, how today’s US traces its racist heritage to British colonies in America, and how it was Britain that industrialised black enslavement in the Caribbean, initiated systems of apartheid all over the African continent, using the appropriation of black land, resources and labour to fight both world wars and using it again to reconstruct the peace. And how, today, black people in Britain are still being dehumanised by the media, disproportionately imprisoned and dying in police custody, and now also dying disproportionately of Covid-19."

Instead it used George Floy's death as an excuse to delay the report into the disparity in ethnic minority deaths from Covid-19. Even when it appear, a key section, containing information on the potential role of discrimination, was removed before publication.

Black People "have taken what we inherited and had no choice but to make sense of it. We have studied, read, written and understood the destructive power of race. And we are telling you that race is a system that Britain built here. We are also telling you that as long as you send all children out into the world to be actively educated into racism, taught a white supremacist version of history, literature and art, then you are setting up a future generation to perpetuate the same violence on which that system of power depends. We are telling you that we need to dismantle, not to de-escalate."

Read the full article here.   

Afua Hirsch has written a powerful opinion piece for the Guardian about the campaign to get a memorial for the victims of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It is titled: "​Britain was built on the backs of slaves. A memorial is the least they deserve." The group Memorial 2007 have been campaigning for nearly 20 years, the memorial, “Remembering Enslaved Africans and Their Descendants”, has been designed, planning permission to place it in Hyde Park has been obtained, but the government has refused to cover the £4m cost of erecting it. The planning permission expires on November 7.

Hirsch argues that: "the country’s treatment of people descended from this history could not be more shameful. From the institutionalised racism they experienced fighting for Britain in both world wars, to the attempts to deport members of the Windrush generation just last year, they have endured the worst of what Britain has had to offer.

She says that the campaign is not "requesting a favour for a marginal section of society. The history of how we came to be this nation is a history for us all. If we can’t dignify it with a simple memorial, one whose location, design, importance and even planning permission have already been established, then we really have lost the plot."

Read the full article here.

A petition to the UK Government to build a memorial to remember the victims of the slave trade has been launched by the charity Memorial 2007. There is no major memorial in England to commemorate the victims of the Transatlantic Slave trade – millions of people who were transported from Africa in ships and kept as slaves. Many of them built Britain, but were subjected to cruelty and forced into inhumane conditions.

Planning permission has been secured for a space in London’s Hyde Park, but runs out in a few weeks, so the charity is calling on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to fund a memorial. Read about and sign the petition here.

Anthony Brown, a paralegal in Manchester, established the Windrush Crusade last year to provide assistance to Manchester’s Caribbean diaspora caught up in the immigration debacle. The Crusade has now joined forces with UK-wide BME Lawyers 4 Justice in a bid to demand that the government put an immediate halt on deportation flights. They are planning a day of action on June 22. It is hoped that a coordinated plan of action can be devised which will see protests happening in major cities including, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and London. Read more here.

Edward Colston died nearly 300 years ago but remains a controversial figure in his home city of Bristol. A generous benefactor to the city, Colston has been unquestioningly venerated for many years, but with little or no mention of the fact that the fortune he donated from was generated by his trading in slaves: a major factor in Bristol's growth as a city. Bristol Council is about to recognise this aspect of his past, but this article on the BBC website asks if it going far enough. The group 'Countering Colston' has long been campaigning for this reconsideration of Colston who has dozens of streets, buildings, institutions and memorials named after him.

Bristol poet laureate Miles Chambers sums up the legacy of enslavement in Bristol: "Some people don't get that black people still feel the full impact of slavery today. We can look at the descendants of the slaves and economically they are still worse off; psychologically they are still worse off; mentally they still feel collectively as inferior; more African-Caribbean males are disproportionately in prison and in the judicial system; they do worse at schools; economically are paid less and are working less.

"The pattern continues and even though many people say slavery is over, because of those legacies we still feel enslaved. A name change or statue move is not going to rectify racism or eradicate the slave mentality that still exists, but it will help to say to black people: 'You are equal to us, you are British, you are valuable and you mean as much to us as any other citizen.'"

Read the full article here.

US lawyer and campaigner Bryan Stevenson contends that slavery in America did not end in 1865 but evolved into lynching, to segregation and to mass incarceration. The United States incarcerates more of its citizens than any other nation in the world. Black men are more than six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men. Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative works on behalf of 3000 children as young as 13 who have been given life sentences without the possibility of parole, and thousands of adults given death sentences.
​Are we in the UK much different? Here, despite being 2.8% of the population, 10% of prisoners are black.